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At home she was never called anything but Sarah, so by calling her Sarah Frances I have already transformed her into a new person, and that is the person this essay shall be dealing with. Sarah Frances--it has a lovely sound to it, suitable to the person to whom it is attached. Sarah Frances was born the fourth and last child of Thomas Franklin Pounds and Roxie Amanda Stidham, the former seeing daylight first in Maysville, Dekalb County, Missouri, and the latter in Neola, a village in the high mountainous region of Kentucky no longer on any map but older maps showed it as part of Wolfe County about twelve miles east of Campton. It was established about 1900 as a station on the Ohio and Kentucky Railroad, which operated from 1901 to 1933. The name was formed from Helen Chase Walbridge, the daughter of the railroad's president, for whose sake the syllables of her name were swapped around to create Neola, where a post office operated from 1900 until 1922 when it was renamed Helechawa. It closed in 1989, while the name Neola remains obscure, as is only appropriate for a fine pastry chef, whose art must remain forever shrouded in mystery.
Tom and Roxie
In confirmation of the royalty of Roxy’s mystery I have heard the story from Archie, Tom and Roxie’s younger son, a tale which he heard in person from a man know to all farm renters in the area of Oak Grove in the 1940s, and that man was named Doc Owens, not because he was a doctor (he wasn’t) but because the initial //D. R. Owens owned considerable land around Oak Grove, including the farm the Stidhams rented across the road west of the Goble homestead and the adjacent 160 acres a half mile west of the
Lowe crossing that Tom Pounds rented. Tom spent the best years of his life farming cotton, but he never owned an acre of it. Of the many farms he rented, the one where his children spent the most impressionable years of their lives, and which they would later call
"the old home place," was the Owens farm west of Lowe, a half-mile west of where the east-west section road crossed the Rock Island line and Bell Cow creek. This is the area of post-oak woods, pasturage, and occasional meadows of bottom land that provides the setting for most of the stories in Part II of the source book, North of Deep Fork: An Oklahoma Farm Family in Hard Times, which was the first volume of family history ever published by the present author.
Little Sarah Frances
One memento of this period remains, an orphan photograph that has the grim eloquence of Walker Evans' photographs of the Depression. It is a full-length portrait on a penny-postcard photo taken in 1912, when Tom was twenty-one. The cane-wrapped arm chair he stands beside and the floral design on the wall paper suggest a photo studio. Everything else in the picture speaks of poverty and the sheer plod of rural labor. The shoes are clodhoppers. The dark pants are ragged at the cuffs, patched at the knees, short in the legs, and big at the waist. They are buckled around with a belt that is far too large, a borrowed decoration probably, for the real work of holding up the pants is done by the galluses, which are too short, for they pull the pants up almost to the chest. The cotton shirt, long sleeved and pin striped, fits better, but it is either missing buttons or the day is so warm he's left the top two buttons undone. On his head he wears a round hat with a flat three-inch brim, made of felt. Not at all a hat for a warm day. The hat is too big, it rests on his ears, and this and its unfrayed condition suggest it may have been borrowed for the occasion. The young man wearing these clothes stands with his right knee slightly flexed, his right hand on the chair back, and his left hand in his pocket, in what seems to be an attempt at nonchalance. He appears to be tall, of erect posture, and the neck revealed by the open shirt is muscular. The mouth is set in a straight line that turns down slightly at one corner, and from under regular brows the eyes look straight out over the viewer's head, as though looking over a mule's head down a row of cotton. It is a reticent face. Neither putting on a portrait smile for the occasion, nor the least bravado, the face has its own eloquence. Though in the first prime of his flesh, the man looks out and sees nothing to smile about. Honest to this perception, he does not smile. Life is work, a serious business, but one to which he is accustomed.
Even so, there's a wistfulness in the face, that of a small boy peering into the sweetshop window but with no money in his pocket. But a man's character is not cut so that all the facets are revealed at once. What is missing from this study of a somber ragamuffin is what the studio pose has not called forth: his love of laughter. Perhaps it was the newness of the occasion--his first "professional" photograph?--or perhaps a consciousness of his own ragged appearance that kept Tom's features set so straight. However it was, outside the studio this young man loved the same things healthy young men usually love. He loved laughter, jokes, music, dancing, and games, and unlike many men who bend under the burden of life and in the sickness of old age condemn the pleasures of their youth, he never lost the love of these things.
This same somber Tom played the fiddle at community dances on Saturday night, and he danced and drank with the best of them. Until marriage and the first baby came. Then the fiddling, dancing, and drinking stopped, as though these things did not mix with the responsibility of children. At least not for a man who wanted to give his children the kind of family stability he had not known himself. We may imagine a Saturday night after a dance, he and his wife are walking home and she is carrying their first baby in her arms. She will not allow him to carry the baby because he's been drinking and she's afraid he might stumble or drop the child. Whether her fears are reasonable or not, it gives him pause. He stops playing country dances. He will not gamble with his family's happiness. So the Saturday nights stopped.
But the well of pleasure he found in living seems to have flowed all his life. He sang and led singing in church. He whistled as he worked in the fields. A rainstorm would come and wash away two weeks of spring planting, and the next morning he would be out in the fields working and whistling while he worked. In his sixties, when I remember him, the long flat-tipped fingers stained with nicotine from hand-rolled Prince Albert cigarettes still tapped out dance rhythms on the arm of his easy chair as he waited for Sunday dinner. Even at that age, the dancing mood could take him, as it did one day in 1955 on the concrete apron of Claude Jondahl's Phillips 66 service station in Chandler, when one of the first tape recorders in Chandler appeared. He kicked up his heels and danced a country soft-shoe breakdown that made men tap their feet to watch him and laugh till they cried. The woman with whom he started the family that made him give up the fiddle was a fifteen-year-old farm girl named Roxie Stidham, who had come from Kentucky to Lincoln County with her parents about 1912 and whose petiteness gave no hint of the girth she would acquire in middle age. Little is known of Roxie's childhood, but one document preserved in a family Bible speaks eloquently.
It is a poem in memory of her grandmother. On one side of the page of a small writing tablet, in a child's hand, is penciled, "Minty Robinson dide June the 11 1899." Then, as if unsatisfied with this effort, the author tried it a second time and got a little better result: "Mrs. Minty Robinson died June the 11, 1899." Then below that, "This name above is my randma." And the last line, "Wrote by Roxie." On the other side, in the same hand, is a poem: O Ma when Days are Dark and friends are few ten thousands times I think of you.
As a young woman, Roxie played the organ, and she and Tom played together when they were first married. But when he gave up the fiddle, she gave up the organ. Any artistic talent she may have had went into raising children and making biscuits. Most of Tom and Roxie's married years were spent in the area around Oak Grove, south and east of the Four Corners and Merrick nook of the county where Tom grew up. Oak Grove does not appear on the map from the 1907 Atlas of Oklahoma (p. 21 above), but Lowe does, and Oak Grove was one mile north of Lowe. Lowe was the first stop on the Rock Island railroad running northwest of Chandler through Merrick and Meridian to the old state capital at Guthrie. From December 15, 1903 to June 30, 1904, it boasted a U.S. postoffice, named for Thomas J. Lowe, territorial secretary of state.
George Shirk's Oklahoma Place Names identifies Lowe with Speer, suggesting that Speer was renamed Lowe, but this is not correct. As Edgar Goodbary explains in the History of Lincoln County, Speer, located one-half mile south and two and three-quarters miles east of Carney, had the distinction of a post office initially, but with the opening of the railway in 1903 the post office was moved from Speer to Lowe. The original Oak Grove school house was built of logs and mistakenly placed on the northwest corner of the intersection. It was then rebuilt on its proper location on the northeast corner in 1900. A
large single room school house which doubled as a church on Sundays, it had a raised platform inside for plays and performances, and outside a steeple housing a school bell.
The school house was built of native timbers, and though it has long since fallen into disrepair and today is half hidden by scrub cedars, as of this writing (1995) it still stands firmly in its place, a monument to a vanished world. The main importance of Lowe for farmers in the Lowe and Oak Grove area was less the short-lived post office than the transportation it offered to town. A person could stand at the crossing with a handkerchief, flag the train down, and ride to Chandler for ten cents. Vernal Goble Riddick relates: "About the old Pea Vine (Rock Island) I.r. that ran from Chandler to Guthrie, as near as anyone in our family remembers, it began operation around 1903, and ended around 1922. It ran across land on the original William Goble homestead about 6 1/2 miles n.w. of Chandler; now owned by a grandson, Lyndon D. Goble. Less than 1/4 mi. down the road from the house was a box-car station, called Lowe, going south from the Goble home on the D. R. Owens farm."
Most of the above quoted material is taken from my first book, as stated above, but it continues in this oral-history vain, and further along we come to a chapter called Sarah and Ira, the latter being the name of her first husband and the father of her only child. Sarah Frances’s story is divided into headings, and in what follows I have kept them as convenient orientation marks for the reader, who I fully expect to be puzzled by the multiplicity of family details--events and names--as the common reader (including myself) usually is. What follows below is Sarah Frances speaking.
1. Childhood and School
Where I was born wasn't close to Oak Grove. It's west on Highway 66 there and back north. About four or five miles west of town and then back north about a mile. The old McCorkle farm. I don't even know where it is for sure. We moved up to Oak Grove when I was four years old I guess--I remember movin up there. A preacher come and helped us move--Holecraft--and he had a hole in his wagon bed, and he stepped in that hole. I don't think he broke his leg, but he hurt himself real bad. I can remember seein him hobble around on a cane after that.
I started to school at Oak Grove when I was five. We moved up north of Oak Grove in October or November after I started to school in the fall. We had a car by that time, and we had to go up a real steep hill, and I wondered how in the world Daddy knew how to do that car to make it go over that hill. I knew it was just goin to get so far up, then start rollin back. I wasn't used to bein in a car that much. I didn't get to go along a whole lot with the other kids. After Bessie got bigger, when Mom and Dad would go to town on Saturday they'd leave us at home pretty often. I remember one Saturday Bessie got a fryin pan and a bunch of lard, and we went down on Bell Cow and fished. We caught minnows, or crawdads. Bessie fried the whole bunch of them, guts, feathers and all--didn't do a thing to them, just rinse them off. Mama come home, she couldn't imagine what in the world happened to her lard. She was just about out of lard, and she'd had plenty when she went to town. [laughs] Bessie fried them--we ate them and thought they were good.
I rode the horses when I wasn't supposed to and things like that. I started ridin probably because Daddy told me not to ride them. I know I rode the mules. I never thought about ridin the mules, because they were large and I was scared of them, but he said, "Whatever you do, don't you ride them mules." We'd been bailin hay all day, and oh I was so tired. They had the harness on them. I climbed up on one of them and rode it to the house, and as far as they knew the mules had never been rode before. But if Dad hadn't told me not to ride them, I probably wouldn't have even thought about doin it. As I was pretty good at doin things they told me I shouldn't do.
I loved ridin horses. Mama was always afraid for me to ride. I'd slip away from the house and go to the mailbox on one, and Mama wouldn't know I was gone. Grandma would see me, and she'd call Mama and tell her, "That kid's on a horse again!" I got thrown a lot. Course I never did know what a saddle was until after I moved to town and joined the Roundup Club. We never did own a saddle.
I loved ridin horses. Mama was always afraid for me to ride. I'd slip away from the house and go to the mailbox on one, and Mama wouldn't know I was gone. Grandma would see me, and she'd call Mama and tell her, "That kid's on a horse again!" I got thrown a lot. Course I never did know what a saddle was until after I moved to town and joined the Roundup Club. We never did own a saddle. How come me to join the Roundup Club I really don't remember. I didn't start ridin with the Round Up Club till after Ira and I was married. After I moved to town. At parade time a group of them would be on their horses and ridin in the parade, and of course I was always crazy about horses. Never was afraid of them. I just decided that I wanted to ride, and I end up buyin a horse.
I went all over the countryside. We hauled the horses in big trucks. Was it the Roundup Club that elected me queen? The Round Up Clubs were the ones that voted--one person was elected Queen for one year. I think the first time I was elected was in 1947 and the last time was in 1949. I enjoyed goin and ridin. I road in the barrel races and flag races, different things that the women competed in. In the barrel races, you went around barrels. They had barrels sittin around across the arena, and you had to go along like this. If you touched the barrel it was so many points off. If you knocked it over you were completely disqualified.
They held the races down at the Round Up Club arena down in the park. When we went to rodeos in other towns--I competed in other towns--and I won quite a bit, but the horse done real good. I couldn't do any good on the flag race because he was scared to death of the flag.
2. Grandpa George
Grandpa liked to play jokes on people. He was always cuttin up and okin go to the in ods with the kids. ed emo to i outs real remember seein him do any of the work. I remember him bein on crutches. When I was younger he split his time up between Dad, Uncle Hank, and Uncle Jim. He stayed with each one of 'em so many months.
Ever time Melvin pulled a prank or anything, Grandpa thought it was really funny. Mama didn't appreciate that. Grandpa always said that Ira never would marry me. He said, "You're just wastin your time. That man's too smart. He'll never marry you." He was teasin me. He loved to tease.
Ira always come and got Grandpa and took him to ball games on Sunday afternoon when he played ball. If Dad didn't go, Ira'd come by and get Grandpa and take him. They played ball up at Oak Grove and then Lone Star. Then he played with the Chandler team and with another team from another town, Tryon or Carney. Ira liked Grandpa real well.
I don't remember Grandpa ever talkin about his wife or family. Except Aunt Amanda, he'd mention something once in a while about the one daughter he'd kept that stayed with him and kept house for him. Evidently Aunt Amanda stayed with him when his wife died. For some reason, he didn't adopt her out. We always assumed that she cooked and kept house for him. I don't know how old she was. He just never referred to his family. The only idea I ever got was that he wasn't very good to his family and he wasn't very good to his wife. And I don't know where that idea come from. I don't know whether it was true or just a story that was told. I think the older children resented the fact that he adopted the younger children out, definitely. Them bein separated--in that day and time if you were separated by very many miles, you just didn't see each other anymore.
3. Uncle Keith Comes to Visit
We started to town one Saturday afternoon when we were livin on the old Sprague place and got about a mile down the road, when we met one of Dad's brothers come to hunt him up--Uncle Keith. The two cars stopped, and he asked Dad if he was Tom Pounds. Dad said Yes. He said, "Well, would you mind to go back to the house for a little bit. I want to talk to you." Dad said, "Well, fine," and we started back. We were a short ways from the corner, and Dad just drove the car down to the corner and turned around. And all the way back to the house, Dad kept sayin, "I wonder if that's one of my brothers. I bet that's one of my brothers." When we got back up to the house, why he introduced himself, and it was Uncle Keith, his baby brother. They put their arms around each other and cried. I remember because I'd never seen grown men show that much emotion. That was the first time Daddy had seen him in years and years and years, and he was married and had a family.
After that Uncle Keith came to see us a few times. I think Uncle Hank and Aunt Cora had hunted them up. I can't think of the boy's name, though I saw him. That was their only child, I think, that one son. His name was Eugene. Uncle Hank and his girls, Irene and Evelyn, traced Aunt Ardath when they were workin for the phone company, and she came back here to visit.
After that Uncle Keith came to see us a few times. I think Uncle Hank and Aunt Cora had hunted them up. I can't think of the boy's name, though I saw him. That was their only child, I think, that one son. His name was Eugene. Uncle Hank and his girls, Irene and Evelyn, traced Aunt Ardath when they were workin for the phone company, and she came back here to visit. When his mom died, Dad left and took Uncle Hank and Uncle Jim
with him. They always gave us the impression they thought Grandpa When his mom died, Dad left and took Uncle Hank and Uncle Jim with him. They always gave us the impression they thought Grandpa didn't care anythin about the kids. They felt like he could have kept them together if he wanted to. I have heard that he never did adopt Aunt Amanda out, or she never did stay with anyone else or anything. Evidently she stayed with Grandpa.
4. The Stidhams
I never was around Grandpa and Grandma Stidham very much. I was always so scared of Grandpa. I stayed all night a few times with 'em when I got pretty good size, but back when I was small I don't ever remember bein around 'em only just if we went on Sunday after church go down there and be there for a while. We were outside playin or somethin. Grandpa didn't allow us to do anything in the house. When I'd go to their home after I got eleven or twelve years old, they had a phonograph, and I loved to hear those records. But I had to go sit down across the room from where the phonograph was before Gertie or Gladys or Minnie was allowed to play it. You couldn't get close to it because you might touch it.
I wasn't allowed to play their piano after they got a piano. Gladys played all the time, but Gladys sat real still and played without movin her back or anything, and me I jumped around on the piano bench. He thought I'd ruin the piano and the piano bench, and I couldn't play that piano cause I wouldn't sit still. I stayed all night with 'em one time. Minnie was over there lookin for a button to sew on, and she pulled the drawer out of the sewing machine and it fell on the floor. Grandma and Grandpa was out on the front porch, and Grandpa said, "I knew she'd be into something before the night was over," and here he come. Grandpa was gonna whip me for droppin the machine drawer, and I wasn't even close to it. I knew he was after me, and I took out runnin.
We lived about two and a half miles, and it was after dark. Grandma run after me, hollerin and beggin me to stop. I went about a mile, and I stopped and let her catch up with me. She promised me if I'd go back and stay all night she wouldn't let Grandpa whip me. But I could hear him yellin how he was gonna beat me when he got ahold of me. I went back, and she slipped me in the south door and up the stair way--we slept upstairs--and she slipped me up there without Grandpa knowin I was there. I stayed all night, but I never did go back after that, except with the folks or something. I was probably eleven or twelve years old. I was always afraid of him.
How come me to join the Roundup Club I really don't remember. I didn't start ridin with the Round Up Club till after Ira and I was married. After I moved to town. At parade time a group of them would
be on their horses and ridin in the parade, and of course I was always crazy about horses. Never was afraid of them. I just decided that I wanted to ride, and I end up buyin a horse. I went all over the countryside. We hauled the horses in big trucks.
Was it the Roundup Club that elected me queen? The Round Up Clubs were the ones that voted--one person was elected Queen for one year. I think the first time I was elected was in 1947 and the last time
was in 1949. I enjoyed goin and ridin. I road in the barrel races and flag races, different things that the women competed in. In the barrel races, you went around barrels. They had barrels sittin around across
the arena, and you had to go along like this. If you touched the barrel it was so many points off. If you knocked it over you were completely disqualified.
They held the races down at the Round Up Club arena down in the park. When we went to rodeos in other towns--I competed in other towns--and I won quite a bit, but the horse done real good. I couldn't
do any good on the flag race because he was scared to death of the flag.
2. Grandpa George
Grandpa liked to play jokes on people. He was always cuttin up well in and jokin and carryin on with the kids. He seemed to like the kids real well. He go to the fields with us when we’d go to work, but I don’t remember seein him do any of the work. I remember him bein on crutches. When I was younger he split his time up between Dad, Uncle Hank, and Uncle Jim. He stayed with each one of 'em so many months.
Ever time Melvin pulled a prank or anything, Grandpa thought it was really funny. Mama didn't appreciate that. Grandpa always said that Ira never would marry me. He said, "You're just wastin your time. That man's too smart. He'll never marry you." He was teasin me. He loved to tease. Ira always come and got Grandpa and took him to ball games on Sunday afternoon when he played ball. If Dad didn't go, Ira'd come by and get Grandpa and take him. They played ball up at Oak Grove and then Lone Star. Then he played with the Chandler team and with another team from another town, Tryon or Carney. Ira liked Grandpa real well.
I don't remember Grandpa ever talkin about his wife or family. Except Aunt Amanda, he'd mention something once in a while about the one daughter he'd kept that stayed with him and kept house for him. Evidently Aunt Amanda stayed with him when his wife died. For some reason, he didn't adopt her out. We always assumed that she cooked and kept house for him. I don't know how old she was. He just never referred to his family. The only idea I ever got was that he wasn't very good to his family and he wasn't very good to his wife. And I don't know where that idea come from. I don't know whether it was true or just a story that was told. I think the older children resented the fact that he adopted the younger children out, definitely. Them bein separated--in that day and time if you were separated by very many miles, you just didn't see each other anymore.
3. Uncle Keith Comes to Visit
We started to town one Saturday afternoon when we were livin on the old Sprague place and got about a mile down the road, when we met one of Dad's brothers come to hunt him up--Uncle Keith. The two cars stopped, and he asked Dad if he was Tom Pounds. Dad said Yes. He said, "Well, would you mind to go back to the house for a little bit. I want to talk to you." Dad said, "Well, fine," and we started back. We were a short ways from the corner, and Dad just drove the car down to the corner and turned around. And all the way back to the house, Dad kept sayin, "I wonder if that's one of my brothers. I bet that's one of my brothers." When we got back up to the house, why he introduced himself, and it was Uncle Keith, his baby brother. They put their arms around each other and cried. I remember because I'd never seen grown men show that much emotion.
That was the first time Daddy had seen him in years and years and years, and he was married and had a family. After that Uncle Keith came to see us a few times. I think Uncle Hank and Aunt Cora had hunted them up. I can't think of the boy's name, though I saw him. That was their only child, I think, that one son. His name was Eugene. Uncle Hank and his girls, Irene and Evelyn, traced Aunt Ardath when they were workin for the phone company, and she came back here to visit.
When his mom died, Dad left and took Uncle Hank and Uncle Jim with him. They always gave us the impression they thought Grandpa didn't care anythin about the kids. They felt like he could have kept them together if he wanted to. I have heard that he never did adopt Aunt Amanda out, or she never did stay with anyone else or anything. Evidently she stayed with Grandpa.
4. The Stidhams
I never was around Grandpa and Grandma Stidham very much. I was always so scared of Grandpa. I stayed all night a few times with 'em when I got pretty good size, but back when I was small I don't ever remember bein around 'em only just if we went on Sunday after church go down there and be there for a while. We were outside playin or somethin. Grandpa didn't allow us to do anything in the house. When I'd go to their home after I got eleven or twelve years old, they had a phonograph, and I loved to hear those records. But I had to go sit down across the room from where the phonograph was before Gertie or Gladys or Minnie was allowed to play it.
You couldn't get close to it because you might touch it. I wasn't allowed to play their piano after they got a piano. Gladys played all the time, but Gladys sat real still and played without movin her back or anything, and me I jumped around on the piano bench. He thought I'd ruin the piano and the piano bench, and I couldn't play that piano cause I wouldn't sit still. I stayed all night with 'em one time. Minnie was over there lookin for a button to sew on, and she pulled the drawer out of the sewing machine and it fell on the floor. Grandma and Grandpa was out on the front porch, and Grandpa said, "I knew she'd be into something before the night was over," and here he come. Grandpa was gonna whip me for droppin the machine drawer, and I wasn't even close to it. I knew he was after me, and I took out runnin. We lived about two and a half miles, and it was after dark. Grandma run after me, hollerin and beggin me to stop.
I went about a mile, and I stopped and let her catch up with me. She promised me if I'd go back and stay all night she wouldn't let Grandpa whip me. But I could hear him yellin how he was gonna beat me when he got ahold of me. I went back, and she slipped me in the south door and up the stair way--we slept upstairs--and she slipped me up there without Grandpa knowin I was there. I stayed all night, but I never did go back after that, except with the folks or something. I was probably eleven or twelve years old. I was always afraid of him.
I know Grandma used to make over Bessie a lot, and she used to stay with 'em quite a bit, but I never was with 'em much. I thought a lot of Grandma, but she didn't have any say so about anything around the house. Grandpa ruled with an iron hand. Grandma worked so hard. 1 just never did feel close to them, cause I was afraid to be over there. And Dad--if Grandpa had whipped me I don't know what might have happened. Dad might have whipped him [laughs]. Anything that happened, Grandpa always layed it onto the grandkids. He was so high tempered he'd work on the car and get mad and beat on it with pliers or a hammer or whatever he had in his hand. He'd throw his tools down in the cow lot, then make the kids go down there and hunt 'em when he needed them again.
5. Sarah Frances and Ira
The Dec 1948 newspaper shows Sarah Frances receiving presentation gifts as outgoing secretary-treasurer, a ceremony that climaxed the annual meeting of the Chandler Roundup club held for the election of officers at Hotel Mack, a building which still holds up a fine brick front on Manvel Avenue.
I didn't get to go along a whole lot with the other kids. After Bessie got bigger, when Mom and Dad would go to town on Saturday they'd leave us at home pretty often. I remember one Saturday Bessie got a fryin pan and a bunch of lard, and we went down on Bell Cow and fished. We caught minnows, or crawdads. Bessie fried the whole bunch of them, guts, feathers and all--didn't do a thing to them, just rinse them off. Mama come home, she couldn't imagine what in the world happened to her lard. She was just about out of lard, and she'd had plenty when she went to town. [laughs] Bessie fried them--we ate them and thought they were good.
I rode the horses when I wasn't supposed to and things like that. I started ridin probably because Daddy told me not to ride them. I know I rode the mules. I never thought about ridin the mules, because they were large and I was scared of them, but he said, "Whatever you do, don't you ride them mules." We'd been bailin hay all day, and oh I was so tired. They had the harness on them. I climbed up on one of them and rode it to the house, and as far as they knew the mules had never been rode before. But if Dad hadn't told me not to ride them, I probably wouldn't have even thought about doin it. As I was pretty good at doin things they told me I shouldn't do.
I loved ridin horses. Mama was always afraid for me to ride. I'd slip away from the house and go to the mailbox on one, and Mama wouldn't know I was gone. Grandma would see me, and she'd I loved ridin horses. Mama was always afraid for me to ride. I'd slip away from the house and go to the mailbox on one, and Mama wouldn't know I was gone. Grandma would see me, and she'd call Mama and tell her, "That kid's on a horse again!" I got thrown a lot. Course I never did know what a saddle was until after I moved to town and joined the Roundup Club. We never did own a saddle.
How come me to join the Roundup Club I really don't remember. I didn't start fidin with the Round Up Club till after Ira and I was married. After I moved to town. At parade time a group of them would be on their horses and ridin in the parade, and of course I was always crazy about horses. Never was afraid of them. I just decided that I wanted to ride, and I end up buyin a horse. I went all over the countryside. We hauled the horses in big trucks.
Was it the Roundup Club that elected me queen? The Round Up Clubs were the ones that voted--one person was elected Queen for one year. I think the first time I was elected was in 1947 and the last time was in 1949. I enjoyed goin and ridin. I road in the barrel races and flag races, different things that the women competed in. In the barrel races, you went around barrels. They had barrels sittin around across the arena, and you had to go along like this. If you touched the barrel it was so many points off. If you knocked it over you were completely disqualified.
They held the races down at the Round Up Club arena down in the park. When we went to rodeos in other towns--I competed in other towns--and I won quite a bit, but the horse done real good. I couldn't do any good on the flag race because he was scared to death of the flag. Grandpa George Grandpa liked to play jokes on people. He was always cuttin up and jokin and carryin on with the kids. He seemed to like kids real well. He'd go to the fields with us when we'd go to work, but I don't remember seein him do any of the work. I remember him bein on crutches. When I was younger he split his time up between Dad, Uncle Hank, and Uncle Jim. He stayed with each one of 'em so many months.
Ever time Melvin pulled a prank or anything, Grandpa thought it was really funny. Mama didn't appreciate that. Grandpa always said that Ira never would marry me. He said, "You're just wastin your time. That man's too smart. He'll never marry you." He was teasin me. He loved to tease. Ira always come and got Grandpa and took him to ball games on Sunday afternoon when he played ball. If Dad didn't go, Ira'd come by and get Grandpa and take him. They played ball up at Oak Grove and then Lone Star. Then he played with the Chandler team.
The next event I should present from my humble life is a photograph of Carney’s graduating class of 1936/37, and since it’s impossible to tell one face from another, the most outstanding feature is architectural--the grand arch of the old doorway, one that newspaper readers would have seen in God’s plenty and perhaps wonder what grand edifice to which that was the entrance. Here’s the answer, friends and neighbors. You’re looking at the Carney High School, and though Carney was a poor country town it was not without its hopes of grander things, a hope caught in the tremendous arches shown here dwarfing the student body, of which I formed an undistinguishable one.
Carney Oklahoma graduating class of 1936/37
Sarah Frances, as the above photo does not reveal, was a lovely woman, clearly marked as such, but as most of les belles dames of yesteryear, would be forgotten today in the perpetual fountain that flows for the mass media’s inundating river of beauties and ourselves, the thirsty consumers.
A Visit to Northern California
When Daryl was a little tyke of three years old, Sarah Frances put him in the kiddies seat behind the driver, and the two of them made the long three-day drive, Ira not having been asked to accompany them, from Chandler Oklahoma to Kelseyville California, experiencing no difficulties along the way except for the boredom of a three-year-old trapped in the back seat of a two-door dodge coup.
The road trip to Lake County was a rarity, but other excursions, more exciting ones, took place at home with greater regularity, the peak tornado season typically running from May into early June. The region, which includes the southern and central Plains states of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska, is known as "Tornado Alley" and experiences the highest frequency of tornadoes in the U.S. during the spring and summer. For youngsters like Daryl and his older cousins, it was a high old play time watching TV, for some of us had no television at home, with the fights featuring Cassius Clay humiliating Sonny Liston.
Ira devoted his life to catching giant catfish from lakes like Carl Blackwell, only a couple of hours driving time away, which he'd bring home for his wife to clean with an especially developed thumb nail which she kept sharp and clean to peal the catfish with, their skin being unlike the usual bass or pearch which provided our common fare, leaving the kitchen floor littered with scales. The bullhead's skin was rather like a child's pajamas, soft to the touch but slick and tricky to remove, which , the fish being cut into steaks and rolled in cornmeal, were served fried with with an array of vegetables.
Sarah Francis and Ira had a goldfish pond between the house and the garage, where we children loved to stand and stare. "They were pretty big," my sister comments, "Because they'd been there for a long time."
When many years later I became a college teacher in central California, the people in Lake County still remembered Sarah Frances and little Daryl driving from Oklahoma to visit them, the older generation, that is, though for the younger only as a tourist, as has also been the case since more recently with myself, introduced myself as a former resident asking the history and genealogical society for assistance. Several older residents of Kelseyville and Upper Lake remember Sarah Frances’s visit and speak of her with affection.
In the one incident which now follows, however, I will be relying on the shaking candle flame of my own memory, which I never thought of as anything particularly shedding much brightness, but it remains the only light that I have. I remember when Sarah Frances came home, as young mothers usually do, to have her baby at the house of Tom and Roxie Pounds in Chandler, Oklahoma. My first cousin Gary Dean Strong of Upper Lake, California, was visiting his grandparents for a few weeks, and he and I were invited into the bedroom to see the mother and child. Gary Dean’s succinct evaluation was thought so remarkable that it has entered family legend, so much so that at this late point in time I am probably the only one who remembers. “He’s neat,” he said. Punto final.
In the period of Daryl’s boyhood when Gary Dean and I also were just lads about seven years older than he, Oklahoma and neighboring states were much disturbed by the fear of tornados, gray sky-darkening storms which would stand up in the west like a freight train reared on its hind haunches and wreak a path of destruction, scattering houses like matchsticks, at least according to the newspapers, reading which we always felt blessed to have escaped God’s wrath one again, or at least that’s the story the churches delighted in telling. Those story evenings were great events for a child like myself, for we got to do a thing I dearly loved, we got to go to Sarah and Ira’s house to watch the stormy warnings on TV, where the weather forecasters spread great maps of the evening sky, while below we two-legged sheep scampered for whatever cyclone shelters we knew of. Preferably we’d go to a a relative’s house, but storms were no respecters of persons, sending the rain alike on the evil and on the good, That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
My own family's most important port of refuge was the storm cellar of Sarah Frances and her husband Ira Howser, and of course little Daryl was always there. I was too young to be scared of tornadoes, but I enjoyed the night sky, and even more than the wind and rain I appreciated watching TV, where we saw marvelous things like fights between Cassius Clay and _____?
We two families would huddle in the cellar, the dimness relieved by only a coal oil lantern, and the bright tips of cigarettes consumed by the men folks, while boy that I was I remember Mama scrubbing blue stains from the kitchen floor, little me at the screen with huckleberry eyes, fleeing anger, knows ritual stairs to the cellar, what is sealed in shelved jars, sixty degrees, dark. And when from the east the black train stands uncoiling, shaking and raging in the broken corn, the cattle gather from the lower pasture, they shelter under elm and cottonwood. We take the pups and the rib-fretted bitch, the door closes soft on the stone counterweight. along benches in kerosene light the grown men speak of flattened crops and houses, all ears outside.
Fear of spiders from the chinked dark and mould, from webs spanning shelves holding last year's canning, snapped beans, tomatoes, okra, a few pears, and blackberry jam in mason jars. Even in burning August in the blackberry patch wWe had feared the dark whip tongued with flame, oldest jam eater of all, his empurpled jaws. Momentarily the wind dies, then a sudden rattle of hail. Someone lights a cigarette, faces glitter with eyes.
Memorable moments of darkness spooked us in the root-cellar, but for me the greatest pleasure of those stormy evenings, was the half hour of whatever western drama Ira had been watching and which all of us, except the women, who were in the kitchen, had been watching also. For me, it was a notable thrill, for in all of my young life I had never seen a western TV movie before and, it felt so real to me, that I was moved to tears, which manfully I hid. It was Matt Dillon in “Gunsmoke,” the American Western television series that aired in the United States between 1955 and1956, some unexpected assistance from Wikipedia coming in with the numbers there. The season consisted of 39 black-and-white 30 minute episodes, which ran for twenty seasons, making it the longest-running Western in television history until it was finally knocked out of first place by “The Sopranos.”
Such were my boyhood days with my father’s younger sister Sarah Francis, but a major event in her life was her son Daryl, who followed in his father’s footsteps as an expert hunter and fisher, so much so that, handsome fellow that he was, the Oklahoma Food and Game Commission used him as their poster boy and stapled his photo across the electrical poles of the state. Handsome is, however, as handsome does, and he did not do handsomely by his mother. Sarah Francis.
6. Following the Birth of Daryl
Not handsomely at all but coldly and with careless indifference he has left her corpse to molder in the red Oklahoma clay from which it had emerged, not that far away either, as the crow flies while he continues his preferred roles in life, not as a son, but like his father as a fisherman and hunter. Boom!--the duck hunter knocks the desperately low-flying wing-flapping bird from the sky. Boom!--the hunter undergoes a fatal heart attack, his name was Ira Howser, and the year 1970. I'd shoot my own mother if she was a mallard said Hem, and I could lead her clean with a number 4 load. A little dog named Rover rolled over and when she was dead she was dead all over, mushroom clouds from the oven dreaming giant lizards. The world lies like a mallard--If I could lead her clean with a number 4 load. Fires flicker in the eddy of feathers, that boom of incoming mortar shaking the earth. And for years nameless as a stick the hunter wept smitten with love for things that pass, hearing the sounds of sergeants driving the men to bunkers, the hunter hid like a recipe for children. Slate-gray roof-sheen rain in Japan, ruminate me summer, and when the sergeants came through I hid In the empty barracks, would not go down into the bunkers. What is that sound of incoming, sounds like thunder storms in Oklahoma. Flute sky and gray mind, Los Alamos little dog ranch school, love for those who pass the mallard, love for those who pass the inevitable shoe.
Daryl was born in 1953, Ira died in a duckblind in 1970--those were two of the facts that swept past Sarah Frances, leaving her little moved except for the ache in her mothering heart for the little one who somehow had never belonged to her but to the wild life his dad shot out of the sky. In 1970 in Reno Nevada she married Alton Huth and it is under his name that she is buried, but it was not a good marriage. Her brother Archie and brother-in-law Earl Strong, the latter a six foot five giant of a man, forbade him to ever darken Sarah France’s doorway again, and Huth had the good sense to know this was serious advice. He vanished and was never heard from again, except that his name still is printed on the marker that designate Sarah Frances’ grave in Chandler’s Oak Park Cemetery, where her parents are buried and where the screech-owl and the woodcock disturb the silence of the night.
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